why does that sound familiar
https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
> (1989) A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
> He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
The thing everyone misinterprets is that there is no hard threshold beyond which things cannot get any worse. Even though the warming that is now locked in was considered the end of the world before, and will have catastrophic effects on the world, it is still worth fighting to keep it from getting even worse.
The worst case scenarios from a "business as usual" rate of emissions growth would in a few hundred years have mankind isolated to a few extremes of latitude as the only places left where the outdoor temperatures won't kill us.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/08/20/climate-emergenc...
You expect Armageddon will happen overnight?
I have no idea if we've hit the point of no return or not, but it's gotten exceedingly clear that we're already seeing the effects of climate change and that they are accelerating. Fires in California, the Amazon, Oregon, Washington. Record high temperatures in various places all over the world. Massive shifts in storm patters, etc.
I have no doubt we're all in for a wild ride but I think we know significantly less than forecasting doom for certain.
Some examples include:
- increased fires increasing CO2
- melting permafrost releasing CO2 and methane
- less ice decreasing ocean and land albedo and absorbing more sunlight
- greater temperature and salinity gradient reducing the mixing of the ocean and reducing the amount of CO2 it can absorb
- warm water absorbs less CO2
- and lots more.
https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/128753852226676736...
Doesn't that describe most pseudoscience/conspiracy posts though? They rarely make up data outright, but instead they cherrypick data that fits their theory. This is why I asked if this theory was already a thing before the pandemic. If it's really the case that China (or any other major emitter) is underreporting their emissions, you'd think that someone at a reputable institution would have raised the alarm about the inconsistency in the past two decades. The lack of this is a reason to doubt the validity of this, at least to a casual observer.
With regards to actual explanations, the twitter thread provides many:
* chinese new year
* sanctions/tariffs
* different style of lockdown by china vs the US
Clearly they liked fewer complaints about environmental concerns because it wasn’t happening where the citizens could see it. In principal they were smart enough to understand the concept of outsourcing pain.
> That’s because western leaders were more than happy to let China manufacture things ‘over there’ so we could wash our hands clean of the environmental damage
Just saying that's not the driver. Not even close. Demand for cheap goods was the driver for the West and the fact that Chinese policies teed up super cheap supply via their policies is the story.
So I don't think your comment isn't accurate. But it would be accurate if you said our western leaders were more than happy to keep the flow of cheap goods going because it was a favorable arrangement and it had a nice side effect of not having to deal with environmental cleanup or pushback.
If the cost of goods was the same in the west, the west would surely deal with environmental issues in exchange for the jobs and tax revenue.
Frankly I have very little faith in these 'projections', whether it is for global warming, or presidential races. I think these are better thought of management techniques in the here and now, intended to achieve a present-day objective, eg increase fear, get consent to take more taxes, stuff like that.
==No matter where 2020 ends up in the standings, it will be warm enough to knock 1998 out of NOAA’s top 10. When that happens, all of the 10 warmest years in their records will have occurred since 2005—and the top seven will have occurred since 2014—Sánchez-Lugo says.==
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-2020-be-the-...
Not that we shouldn't do anything, because climate change is real. It would just be nice if people could stop being so fire and brimstone about stuff that turns out not to be the end of the world after all (like ACB getting confirmed to SCOTUS). The society that cried wolf.
I mean, people are talking about an overturn of Roe v. Wade, somehow failing to realize that RvW was ruled on by a SCOTUS with a conservative majority.
If Obergefell gets overturned (it won't), an actual law can be passed this time, hell maybe even a constitutional amendment, since nearly a supermajority of Americans outright support gay marriage.
If states pass constitutional laws, I'm sure they'll be upheld by the current SCOTUS. If laws are unconstitutional, I'm sure they won't be.
What is the problem here? That originalist conservatives won't be legislating from the bench as has been happening? If abortion needs to be a protected right then amend the constitution.
And as for legislating from the bench, few are more guilty of that than Alito and Thomas.
The case I think you're talking about (DNC v WSL) was literally about whether or not state legislatures can decide when to require ballots. Wisconsin's legislature decided election day. A lower court said this was unconstitutional, but it's not, so the majority opinion was for WSL.
Please show me where in this opinion the assertion was made that election results must be called by TV networks on election night.
Also funny about his opinion is that he doesn't seem to understand that states rarely (never?) "definitively announced results on election night." States typically don't certify their results for weeks. Only TV networks call elections on election night based on projections of what the final results might be after states count all their legally cast ballots. Kavanaugh either doesn't understand or has a problem with how elections in this country have always worked.
How can you straight-facedly opine on the opinion when you clearly haven't read it? Instead of reading a NYT article, which is basically a partisan rag at this point, try reading the actual opinion.
And then you can quote back to me the parts about television. Except you can't, because they're not there.
> Kavanaugh just wrote an opinion last week that it is critical that election results must be called by TV networks on the night of the election.
This is a lie. Stop lying.
I have a lot of problems with NYT, including ideological problems, but to say it's just a partisan rag tells me all I need to know about this conversation.
A reputable news org shouldn't have a handful of problems, much less "a lot". And certainly not blatantly obvious ideological / bias problems.
Back to SCOTUS, the quote was:
> Those states also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter.
Emphasis mine. Nowhere did the majority opinion say "certify" the results. States (or to be more precise, the districts within them) absolutely do start reporting their results on election night.
And from there, it’s pretty clear that indecision around the election (and specifically mail-in voting) has indeed caused issues, so if anything the last two weeks affirm the SCOTUS majority opinion.
Why do you believe a constitutional amendment is necessary for a right already determined to be constitutional?
An explicit constitutional amendment would establish it much more firmly, and would be impeccably legitimate in precisely the way Roe isn’t. These are very desirable properties if you value democracy, or if you wish to establish things more permanently.
But let's be honest - almost no one opposing Roe V. Wade does so on the grounds that the argument from the fourth amendment is weak, they argue primarily from religious grounds that pregnant women fundamentally do not have the right to terminate, as they consider such to be an act of murder in nearly all, or all cases.
The crux of the matter regarding abortion for most people has never really been a legalistic one but a metaphysical and often religious one - the rights of the unborn versus the rights of a woman's autonomy over her body.
While I would hope that Republicans who drape themselves in Christian piety and refer to themselves as pro-life in order to imply that their opponents are pro-death, and who have made an existential pillar out of repealing Roe V. Wade for forty years, would stack the courts with judges who would consider the matter without undue bias, I suspect that bias is the intent for stacking the court to begin with,and that the actual constitutional validity of the decision isn't meant to matter.
I regret that your post has derailed this conversation into a sectarian display of othering, aversion, and moralization. No further productive exchanges on the topic will be found here.
I will instead note that when we treat our ideological opponents as respectable people who are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time (so to speak) it is not because we expect that our enemies will reap the benefits of this respect. It is for our own sake that we ought do this.
That the Republican Party has sought the repeal of Roe V. Wade since the decision was made, and that the primary impetus behind that is religious, rather than legalistic, is so obvious that it should be banal. They literally campaign on getting justices in to repeal Roe V. Wade. Yet you've suddenly turned defensive and accused me of moralizing and condescending simply by mentioning it.
It probably is best to table this. It's futile to even try to have a decent political conversation here anyway.
While that sounds good on paper, 50 percent of people in this country live in 9 states. The population distribution is not compatible with passing legislation in that way.
Edit to add: those 9 states only have 44.5 percent of the electoral college and 18 percent of the Senate.
I am someone who does believe that we are having an impact on the global temp. and I do think we need to do something about it.
Screaming the sky is falling is not helping. Stonewalling any other source of power except Solar and Wind is not helping. Suggesting that we cut back farmland drastically, in a move that would kill a bunch of people is not helping. Telling people to give up cars and planes is not helping.
We need to work to come up with solutions that will work for everyone, not just San Fransisco, New York, Amsterdam. We need solutions for Valdosta, GA, Snowshoe, WV, Salmon, ID. These solutions can not be "Just move out of dying places". That is just as bad as telling coal miners to learn to code.
That means that different regions will have to have different standards, something we have not seem to come to grip with here in the US.
It it probably more fair to say that scary models get more attention and thus incentivize scary modeling though.
In fact it was never "always 10 years" as tipping point has been considered 450 ppm (it could be sooner), and CO2 is steadily increasing currently is 412.16 ppm. https://www.co2.earth/ So we can estimate how much time is left by progression.